Who will police the police?

Coast Guard?

Okay, enough Simpsons references. This is an interesting story. It seems that a cop in Iowa emailed a bunch of mugshots (the article leaves us to guess who they were sent to) of people wearing Obama shirts. Apparently he remarked on the quality of Obama's fanbase and it was not well received. He was suspended for 30 days and will be undergoing "DPS training." Whatever that is.

On the surface, this looks like an unseemly quashing of free speech. The officer sent the email on his own time from his own computer. However, the article seems to imply that the officer broke some sort of departmental policy in doing this. Perhaps the mugshots he made public were not quite ready to be made public? We're left to guess.

Still, can you imagine if such an event had happened during the Bush administration? I'm not sure we'd be hearing the end of it.